Happy families aren't actually all alike, and they're not even always happy. The U.S. Supreme Court -- which often seems like a case study in family dysfunction -- was briefly happy on Monday, when it announced that states may, if they choose, limit their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) privileges to their own citizens. Virginia's in-state-only FOIA survived its own lawyer, who put on one of the most inept and infuriating oral arguments of the term, to win 9 votes.

The issue in McBurney v. Young is potentially important to anyone who owns property in another state, or who seeks to do business across state lines. Under this decision, states may, if they wish, make it harder, for example, to obtain property-tax records for those contemplating interstate real estate investments. The Court, however, was at pains to point out that out-of-staters who want those records can still get them by other means. In addition, only a small minority of states limit their FOIA statutes to in-staters. The practical importance of the decision, it suggested, would be small.

The plaintiffs in the case offered the Court two chances to expand constitutional doctrine protecting out-of-state residents. The first, and most sweeping, was the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, which provides that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." Mark McBurney had lived in Virginia and obtained a divorce and a child-support decree there. But when he moved out of state, state authorities delayed their enforcement of the order, costing him nine months' child support. He asked for the documents surrounding his case, and for all documents explaining the state's policy in support enforcement; because he now lives in Rhode Island, the state rejected his request. He later was able to get most of the information under a different state law. Roger Hurlbert runs a California business that obtains real-estate tax records for private clients. When he sought them from a Virginia county under the state FOIA, however, he was refused. Again, he could gather the information in person, or from the Web, but could not demand the duplicate documents to which Virginians are entitled.

The plaintiffs argued that the exclusion violated their "fundamental privileges" to own and transfer property, use the courts, and "pursue a common calling"--in this case, Hurlbert's business of gathering and selling records. The Court did not say these "privileges" are not protected; it said, instead, that they aren't infringed by the state's law. It reasoned that the purpose of the law was to give Virginians access to information about how their government works, not to discriminate against out-of-staters. Since there was no "protectionist" motive, the court said, there's no violation.

They plaintiffs also claimed they have a "fundamental" privilege of access to public information. The Court replied that nobody--local or out-of-state -- has any such right under the Constitution: "the Constitution does not guarantee the existence of FOIA laws. ... Moreover, no such right was recognized at common law or in the early Republic. Nor is such a sweeping right 'basic to the maintenance or well-being of the Union.'"

Hurlbert also argued that the exclusion violated the mysterious doctrine called the Dormant Commerce Clause, under which judges often void laws that impede the free flow of the national market. The doctrine was pioneered by Chief Justice John Marshall, but recently Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have begun muttering, "What did he know?" Thomas appended a one-paragraph concurrence in McBurney suggesting that the Court ought to just sweep away every dormant-commerce precedent since 1824. The Court simply said that "Virginia's FOIA law neither 'regulates' nor 'burdens' interstate commerce; rather, it merely provides a service to local citizens that would not otherwise be available at all."

A quiet moment is nice; as the term's major decisions descend over the next two months, the fangs will come out again. Nonetheless, something about Virginia's statute, and its arguments, don't sit quite right. Many Americans buy or sell property across states; many people like Mark McBurney are affected by government action in states they no longer live in. To treat them differently does seem like discrimination at its core -- especially since, under the terms of state FOIAs, those requesting information are required to pay the full cost of gathering and copying it, meaning the state isn't burdened by the requests. Even if the purpose of FOIA is largely to allow citizens to access political information, closing off that information to other Americans is a sleazy business. We don't restrict access to state capitols and legislative sessions to in-staters. Political decisions in one state can affect people in many others.

But the McBurney Court didn't quite say that Virginia's law was a good idea. The opinion reads more like benign advice to the kids' table at Thanksgiving dinner: "Play nice, don't fight." Only a few states discriminate in their FOIA laws. The forces that oppose these limitations include a number of business interests, who tend to get listened to when the state legislature meets. A modest theory of judicial review would suggest that this is a prime case to be resolved by the political process. A decision widening the Privileges and Immunities Clause might have set off a raft of challenges to state business-licensing and other laws; resort to the Dormant Commerce Clause might have stirred up the grouchy uncles who don't believe it exists.

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Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

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Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

There’s no way this man could be president, right? Just look at him: rumpled and scowling, bald pate topped by an entropic nimbus of white hair. Just listen to him: ranting, in his gravelly Brooklyn accent, about socialism. Socialism!

And yet here we are: In the biggest surprise of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, this thoroughly implausible man, Bernie Sanders, is a sensation.

He is drawing enormous crowds—11,000 in Phoenix, 8,000 in Dallas, 2,500 in Council Bluffs, Iowa—the largest turnout of any candidate from any party in the first-to-vote primary state. He has raised $15 million in mostly small donations, to Hillary Clinton’s $45 million—and unlike her, he did it without holding a single fundraiser. Shocking the political establishment, it is Sanders—not Martin O’Malley, the fresh-faced former two-term governor of Maryland; not Joe Biden, the sitting vice president—to whom discontented Democratic voters looking for an alternative to Clinton have turned.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

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Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.

The new version of Apple’s signature media software is a mess. What are people with large MP3 libraries to do?

When the developer Erik Kemp designed the first metadata system for MP3s in 1996, he provided only three options for attaching text to the music. Every audio file could be labeled with only an artist, song name, and album title.

Kemp’s system has since been augmented and improved upon, but never replaced. Which makes sense: Like the web itself, his schema was shipped, good enough,and an improvement on the vacuum which preceded it. Those three big tags, as they’re called, work well with pop and rock written between 1960 and 1995. This didn’t prevent rampant mislabeling in the early days of the web, though, as anyone who remembers Napster can tell you. His system stumbles even more, though, when it needs to capture hip hop’s tradition of guest MCs or jazz’s vibrant culture of studio musicianship.

A controversial treatment shows promise, especially for victims of trauma.

It’s straight out of a cartoon about hypnosis: A black-cloaked charlatan swings a pendulum in front of a patient, who dutifully watches and ping-pongs his eyes in turn. (This might be chased with the intonation, “You are getting sleeeeeepy...”)

Unlike most stereotypical images of mind alteration—“Psychiatric help, 5 cents” anyone?—this one is real. An obscure type of therapy known as EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is gaining ground as a potential treatment for people who have experienced severe forms of trauma.

Here’s the idea: The person is told to focus on the troubling image or negative thought while simultaneously moving his or her eyes back and forth. To prompt this, the therapist might move his fingers from side to side, or he might use a tapping or waving of a wand. The patient is told to let her mind go blank and notice whatever sensations might come to mind. These steps are repeated throughout the session.